Web Traffic Guide to Google Search Engine Optimization Training

Are you looking to get more “web traffic” to your online business, but don’t have a large advertising budget? If your answer is yes, then you should take the time to learn about search engine optimization or aka “SEO.”

In this Web Traffic Guide go Google SEO I will share with you what is search engine optimization is… and how it works. I will also share with you how the most popular search engine Google determines its search results.

Search engine optimization training starts here as I provide you a “SEO Training Guide for WordPress SEO.” Building a blog and writing articles is not enough to drive traffic to your website. You have to optimize it for search engines so it can be seen and ranked on Google.

When you optimize your website you’re basically making it easier for search engines to find your content and index it’s database. With billions of blogs in the world wide web you need a way for your content to stand out. Let’s face it, if your blog post is not seen on the 1st page of Google the likelihood of it being read by someone is slim to none.

The term “SEO” or search engine optimization is intimidating to most people. People feel that SEO is hard or confusing because they simply don’t understand all the fancy terminologies like metatags, on-page optimization, backlinks, meta-description, etc

I am here to tell you that the overall concepts are actually very easy to understand if you just take the time to learn it and apply SEO to your website.

Benefits of SEO Training

1. Google is the #1 Search Engine – In 2013, there was an average of 5,922,000,000 searches on Google per day. There are people all around the world that have questions and are searching for information. You need to get your website ranked on Google so that you can reach all these potential visitors.

2. Free Traffic to Your Website – Instead of spending thousands of dollars on advertisements you could invest that money and time into getting your page ranked on Google. Often times when your page gets ranked on the first page of Google it stays there for many years to come. Thus, you get free organic traffic to your website every single day.

3. Save You Money – Hiring an SEO Consultant or SEO Service is very expensive. Some search engine optimization service providers charge from $600 – $2,000 a month with usually a 3 month minimum contract. If you took the time to learn how to do SEO yourself you could save yourself thousands of dollars.

4. Make More Money – The only way that you are going to sell your products and services is to get your offer in front of the eyes of as many people as you can. For example, if you have a conversion rate of 2% that means that in order for you to make 2 sales you need to get your offer in front of 100 people. So statistically the more traffic you generate the more sales you get.

So to help you with your SEO training I have collected some of my best SEO training articles and placed them below. These SEO training articles will share with you some of my best tips and strategies regarding search engine optimization.

SEO Training Tips

1. Learn One Tip Per Day – SEO training can feel overwhelming if you have never been exposed to it before. I suggest learning one concept or tip per day and really digest it so you fully understand it before you move on to the next subject.

2. Apply What You Learned – Search engine optimization requires you to take immediate action. As soon as you learn something about SEO apply it to your website right away. The best way to learn is to apply that knowledge.

3. Be Patient with SEO – Search engine optimization takes time to see results. Depending on how competitive your keyword is and how aggressive your backlinking strategy is, it may take up to 3 months before you see your efforts of SEO payoff. Keep in mind that your time and effort will yield free traffic for many months or years to come so SEO is worth the wait.

4. Be Consistent with SEO – Doing SEO requires consistent action. You need to optimize every website page, blog post, image, and video. Consistency is key to getting ranked on the search engines.

5. Write Quality Content – Search engines like Google are looking for the best content to display on their search results so make sure that you write quality content that people want to read, like, and share.

6. Content is King – Quality is important but “Quantity” matters too. The more content you write the better. Don’t short change your audience and readers. The days of writing 350 word articles and getting them ranked on Google are over. Your goal is to write at least 1,500 word articles. I suggest aiming for 2,500 word articles to really stand out.

7. Share on Social Media – One of the best ways to start getting traffic to your website is by getting it shared on Social Media. Social Media “Likes” provides social proof that your content is shareable and more importantly quality content that should be backlinked.

There are many ways to drive traffic to your website, but in my opinion Google SEO is the best form of traffic.

Get More Web Traffic with SEO

People use the internet to search for information on a daily basis. The internet is part of our everyday life because it is highly accessible through laptops, personal computers, mobile phones and tablets. All businesses must have a website in order to compete in today’s marketplace because essentially websites are virtual store-fronts.

The most popular way for customers to find websites online is by means of search engines. The most popular search engine Google processes over 1 billion search queries each day from people around the world in 181 countries and 146 languages. As a result, website owners should focus their marketing efforts on getting ranked on search engines because it can be a great resource for providing free web traffic.

Ranking high on search results is important because the majority of people click on the top results of the keyword research. Thus, in order for your website to be seen it must rank among the top ten websites on search query results. Any lower and the odds of visitors to a website decreases rapidly.

“Whenever Google displays a page of results relating to a particular keyword, a high percentage of people will choose to explore the #1 ranked website. A smaller percentage of people will choose to explore the #2 ranked website and so on. The average breakdown of these percentages is as follows.” – Dr. Anthony Fernando

The number 1 ranked website receives 42% of clicks

The number 2 ranked website receives 12% of clicks

The number 3 ranked website receives 8% of clicks

The number 4 ranked website receives 6% of clicks

The number 5 ranked website receives 5% of clicks

The number 6 ranked website receives 4% of clicks

Search Engine Results Pages (SERP), is the page that is returned to you whenever you use a search engine. The goal of search engine optimization is to improve your web page’s ranking amongst the other “organic” listings in the SERPs. The reason it is called “organic” is because the search rankings cannot be purchased it happens naturally. Here is an example of a SERP for the keyword phrase “Doritos Chips.”

Essentially having a higher search ranking will provide more traffic to a website. More traffic to a website can lead to more customers, revenue and profit. SEO is an important aspect of an online marketing campaign because it can help improve search engine ranking. Web businesses can benefit from SEO because it provides a cost-effective way to get advertisements. It’s a relatively low-cost way to increase traffic and generate revenue. A small firm with good SEO skills can rank higher in the search results than larger competitors.

How do Search Engines Work?

In order for web business owners to understand how SEO works, they need to first understand how search engines work. As explained before, the user enters a search query, clicks the Search button, and then waits for the site to display a list of matching results. The search results take less than a second to load because the searches take place on the search engine sites own web server.

Most people think that when they search on search engines they are researching the entire web. Instead they are actually just searching the search engine’s stored server database. So searching Google or another search engine really means searching the index to that sites in-house database of web pages – not the web itself. Some search engines have databases that hold billions of individual web pages.

Search engines find pages on the web using special software. This software automatically scans the web looking for new and updated web pages. The terminology commonly used for this software is “search engine spiders” or “crawlers.” Since the web is so massive it may take a couple weeks before the crawlers can complete their cycle of scanning the web.

When a search engine spider encounters a page it will follow all the links it encounters and copy the pages it finds into the search engine database. The pages that are copied in the search engine databases are indexed into stored files. Thus, when a person searches a keyword on a search engine it will search its indexed databases and find the most relevant webpages to match the keywords that are searched.

The web pages that are the best match are returned as search results ranked from top to bottom identifying the most relevant web page at the top. Each search engine has its own method of determining rankings for their websites.

Most Popular Search Engines

The most popular search engine in terms of users is Google. In any given month, depending on who’s doing the counting, Google is responsible for about 65% of all web searches made in the U.S. Thus, Google should be the search engine that all website owners should strive to optimize best for.

Google’s algorithm for ranking websites is a closely kept secret but it has three main components that are commonly referred to: Keyword Analysis, Text Links, and Page Rank.

Keyword Analysis:Google queries its results based off relevance of keywords. Google also examines how the keywords are used in its content. Google examines font size, frequency of keyword usage, proximity, etc.

Text Links:Google also ranks pages based of how pages are linked amongst each other. The more pages that are linked to your website in terms of relevance will result in higher rankings as well.

Page Rank:Google also has its own unique Page Rank technology that determines importance and popularity among users. Page Rank determines a page’s importance by counting the number of other pages that link to that page. The more pages that link to a page, the higher that page’s Page Rank.

The second biggest search engine is Yahoo. Yahoo has been around longer than Google but lost its number one ranking to its major competitor. Yahoo!’s search market share is in the 17% range and declining slightly, which makes it the number-two player to the Google juggernaut.

Yahoo determines its search ranking results based mainly on website text content. For users who want to rank well on Yahoo they must focus their efforts in including exact keywords and phrases within their text.

The third biggest search engine is Bing. Bing is Microsoft’s own version of the search engine. Bing’s market share is about 12% and is still growing. Bing’s search results are based off of text links and keywords.

Web business owners are best served by trying to rank high on Google as it focuses on keyword analysis and text linking which will result in high rankings on Yahoo and Bing.

What is Search Engine Optimization?

SEO = “Search Engine Optimization.” This is a set of techniques and processes used to improve your website’s rankings in the search engines for a particular set of keywords, or keyword phrases.

Search engine optimization focuses on increasing the organic, or natural, traffic that you receive based on your ranking within the search engines.

The ultimate goal of SEO is to ensure your website appeals to search engine crawlers, or bots. The search engines will take note of your site and its content, categorizing it in a way that will allow it to show up in the search engine results pages when certain keywords are typed.

Of course, the real goal is to increase targeted website traffic in hopes of generating new business. It’s just that this is achieved through better search engine rankings.

While each search engine uses its own algorithm for determining the ranking of every page that is indexed, it is possible to increase your rankings by making your site informative and visible via both on-page and off-page techniques. Sites that are designed with ease-of-use and quality information in mind tend to do better than those built sloppily and without a solid plan.

A – The top three ads in the shaded area are paid ads. They have been created through Google’s Adwords program and are Pay-Per-Click (PPC) ads.

B – As I conducted a “local search,” Google is showing me a Google Map relevant to my search. The red drops, lettered “A-G,” represent the businesses that have claimed their Google Places listings.

C – These ads are also paid ads created through Adwords.

D – This is an “organic” listing that can be manipulated through SEO. You can see that this business has created/claimed their Google Places listing as the “A” tear drop appears in their listing.

E – These two listings are standard “organic” listings… the kind most are familiar with

Importance of Keyword Research for SEO

Search engines are designed to have people type in keywords or phrases that best describe what they are looking for. Search engines pull query results from their database which are indexed by keywords. Major search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing all share the same commonality when it comes to ranking well on their search engines: Keyword Analysis. In order to rank well on search engines you have to be able to identify the right keywords that are going to provide the best results for your website. When businesses fail to properly research the best keywords that will provide them the most traffic they will waste time optimizing their website.

“In our experience, the main reason people fail is that they do not spend the time up front to do the market research necessary to check if their business idea is viable. Instead they rush in, select a random niche, target random keywords or worse – they don’t target keywords at all and then they just hope for the best. This is usually a recipe for disaster. The people who succeed online take a very different approach. They research markets carefully, they identify profitable niches. They target specific keywords and they follow a proven plan” – Dr. Fernando

Market Samurai is a keyword research tool designed by Noble Samurai Design Company. Market Samurai was developed in 2008 to help improve keyword research analysis. Noble Samurai created a research tool that takes all of Google’s analytical systems and combines them into one software application. This provides users the ability to research keywords from one source. The creators of Market Samurai determined that there are:

“Four Golden Rules of Keyword Research”

High Relevance

Good Traffic

Acceptable Competition

High Commerciality

1. High Relevance: Relevance to a particular niche or business cannot be overlooked. Obtaining high rankings for a keyword that has no relevance to a business or to the searcher will result in people leaving the website.

“The fact of the matter is that if you target irrelevant keywords you may obtain a top ranking in Google and you may even generate a lot of traffic to your website. However, if the content of your website is not relevant to the keywords you’ve targeted, then the people who visit your site will probably not be interested in what they find” – Dr. Anthony Fernando

Website owners need to target keywords that are relevant to their product or service as well as relevant to what customers are looking for.

2. Good Traffic: Some keywords can generate lots of traffic while others will result in lower levels of traffic. It is important to determine which keywords are searched the most on search engines so that websites can be optimized towards those specific keyword phrases.

“Many people are surprised to learn that in most niches over 90% of all keywords have insignificant levels of traffic and are not really worth spending a lot of time and effort on. Unfortunately, when a lot of people start their Internet business, they target keywords at random and are then disappointed to find that they receive little or no traffic to their website” – Dr. Anthony Fernando

When performing keyword research website owners need to validate that the keywords they are targeting have strong levels of traffic based off of quantitative data.

3. Acceptable Competition:Google’s top search web page rankings result in the most traffic. Particularly the top 5 web pages on the front page of Google will receive majority of the traffic. The only problem with this is that there are only 5 positions available which results in competition with millions of other webpages for a particular keyword query.

It is important to identify keywords that have high relevance, provide good traffic but have low levels of competition. When businesses try to rank for a keyword with a high level of competition they run the risk of not having their website seen at all.

“Most online business owners fail online because they just climb into a niche market blindly and start creating content. They then hope that Google will somehow find their site and magically give them a front page ranking” – Dr. Anthony Fernando

4. High Commerciality:Another unique aspect of Market Samurai is that it helps you research the potential profit levels of your keyword. They use the data based off Google Adwords research tool. Google Adwords is a Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising methodology. PPC advertising provides small text ads that are placed on the side of webpages.

Google displays these PPC ads on their front pages. Commerciality is based off of how much advertisers typically will pay to post their ads for a particular keyword using PPC. The more money advertisers are willing to spend for PPC will typically determine that there is a high level of commerciality for a keyword phrase.

Targeting the right keywords in SEO is vital to websites success on the search engines. Targeting the wrong keywords will result in low levels of traffic to a website. Low levels of traffic will result in lower conversions and ultimately less profit for business owners. Simple Google SEO Strategies

First, you must understand that each and every page of your website needs to be SEO’d. This will not pose too much difficulty if your website is rather small but if you have dozens (or hundreds) of pages, the work to be done will be substantial.

Meta Title

“Meta Tags“ is a common SEO term that refers to HTML coding to describe certain features of a website page. Meta Tags are actually one of the easiest things to optimize on a WordPress blog yet so many people don’t do it all or do it incorrectly. The great thing about Meta Tags is it’s in your complete control. I am going to walk you through why you should be paying attention to meta tags and how you can set them up correctly. Essentially I am going to show you how to optimize your meta tags to improve your on-page SEO.

Why are Meta Tags Important?

Meta Tags are one part of Google’s algorithm ranking factors and on-page seo. Meta Tags also show snippets on Google Search Engine Results Page (SERP) which can factor in whether people click-through to view your website. When people search on Google your Meta Tags can be the difference whether someone reads your content versus someone else’s page.

Below is an example of a Google search result with the Title highlighted in blue and the description below the web address.

Example of HTML Meta Tags

<meta name=”Description” content=”Pioneer Magnetics ueses its state-of-the-art power supply repair facility to repair, refurbish and replace its own products as well as replace products from other companies.”>

<meta name=”Keywords” content=”Power Supply, Power Supply Repair”>

<meta name=”Robots” content=”all”>

How to Setup Your Meta Tags

Some WordPress themes have built in SEO functions available. If your WordPress theme doesn’t have any SEO capabilities then you can download a plugin called All-in-One SEO

1. Download SEO Plugin: Once you download All-in-One SEO pack you can easily input your information of your website for proper meta tagging. The image below is an example of the SEO plugin in action. As you can see the plugin provides a preview snippet of what the information will look like on the Google SERP results.

2. Create an Engaging Title: The first tag that you can add is the page Title. Not only will this help the search engines identify what information is on your page but it will also help readers get an idea of what your article is about. Your headline title can have a huge impact on your conversions of click-throughs to your website. Make sure you write an engaging headline that will entice readers to click on your link. Your title should be no more than 65 characters otherwise the entire title will not display on Google’s search results page. (Tip: Make sure to add your keywords in the Title Description)

3. Fill in Your Description: In this section you have the ability to tell Google and potential readers a short description about what your blog post is about. You only have about 158 characters that can display in your description so every word counts. Make sure you provide some rich information to help people click on your page. (Tip: Add your keywords in the beginning and end of your description)

4. Fill in Keyword Tag: You simply tell Google what your keywords are. This area doesn’t carry much significance as it once did but it does still help to clearly let Google know what your article is about. When you add your keywords make sure to put a comma in between each word. Do not add too many keywords in this area. I suggest about 2-3 max because you don’t want to confuse Google of the main keywords you are trying to rank for.

5. Robots Tag: I usually leave these boxes unchecked unless I don’t want Google to index my page or post for a particular reason. In the event you don’t want Google to index your page or post just simply check these boxes so that the Google Robots know not to crawl any further.

So every time you write a blog post or page make sure you take the time to fill in your meta tags. Simply filling out your meta tags won’t guarantee you rankings on Google but it will help with your overall on-page optimization.

Keyword Density

Your on page content should be unique to your website if at all possible and should also include the keyword phrases you are targeting. You don’t need to worry about the specific “keyword density” anymore as that is mostly a thing of the past.

However, it does help to include the terms you are specifically targeting at least once within the title of the headline, once within the first paragraph, and later in the body or final paragraph.

Your Web Page URL or Domain Name

If your website architecture allows you to control the name of each page, it’s best to see that it includes your primary keyword phrase. If you were targeting the term, “power supply repair,” for example, you might create a domain to be powersupplyrepair.net

Internal Text Links

As discussed another aspect to rank on Google is to focus on text links. Links are basically words that are bolded or underlined on your text content. When a person visiting a site clicks on that highlighted word it will upload another website. The more webpages that are linked to a website will allow search engine crawlers to index the site and store pages on their database.

When creating links it is important to have target keyword be the text link. In the example above one of the text links is also a target keyword Power Supply Repair Pricing. When a customer clicks on that link it will send them to another webpage. In this example, the web viewer is redirected to the following page.

Internal linking is when a link is redirected to another webpage within a website. The goal is to have an online visitor spend as much time on the website as possible. If a viewer finds a website useful and easy to navigate it will entice them to learn more about the business.

What is an Anchor Text? and Why Should You Care

“Anchor Text“ in SEO is a common term that is also referred to as a backlink. Essentially an anchor text is a clickable link or hyperlink most often times blue in color. Here is an example of an anchor text: Instead of linking to my home page like marketingaccesspass.com I could create an anchor text link saying Marketing Access Pass. When someone clicks on this link it will send them to my home page.

HTML Code for an Anchor Text

<a href="http://www.example.com">Example Anchor Text</a>

Why is an Anchor Text Important?

Your probably wondering why an anchor text is important for SEO. Anchor texts allow the search engines to index a page based on the particular keyword. This is helpful for getting your pages indexed to specific relevant terms.

Search engine optimizers like to use anchor texts to improve their off-page seo and on-page seo. For example, if I had written an article about the Insanity Nutrition Guide, I would try to get as many anchor texts or backlinks back to that page with the keywords “Insanity Nutrition Guide”, “Insanity Nutrition”, “Insanity Health and Nutrition Book”, etc

When you get a lot of backlinks with variations of your keyword term it signals to Google that this page or post is indeed about that particular subject.

Simple Anchor Text Tips

It is important to get anchor texts with variations of your keyword phrase. If you have too many anchor texts with the same anchor text phrase then it gives off a red-flag to Google or other search engines that this is manipulated and not a natural backlink. When people link back to articles they may link back with your website address or a description of the page topic.

The second tip is to have your keyword in your title. Most people like to link back to pages by using the title in their anchor text hyperlink. For example, if my blog post was “Top 5 Reasons to Follow the Insanity Nutrition Guide” you might get a anchor text hyperlink like this “Top 5 Reasons to Follow the Insanity Nutrition Guide”

How to Create an Anchor Text for Internal Linking

To create an anchor text in WordPress and link out to another website or link within a page of your site you first highlight the words that you want to make a link for. Then you click on the linking icon pictured below.

After you click that icon a hyperlink editing tool pops-up and you can use it to add your website address that you want to link to and then you can add the title of the link. It is important to have your keywords in the highlighted text and in the title of your anchor text hyperlink.

You can also click the box “Open link in a new window/tab” which automatically opens a new window in your web browser so visitors don’t have to leave the current page they are looking at. I suggest clicking this box when linking out to other people’s websites so they don’t leave your website. Once you have completed editing your anchor text link click the Add Link button.

The word anchor text can be confusing sometimes because people use the phrases hyperlink, backlink and anchor text interchangeably. But, essentially for SEO purposes they all serve the same purpose of providing text links into your website or linking out to other websites.

So the next time someone asks you what an “Anchor Text” is you can intelligently explain to them what it is and provide them some examples of why it’s beneficial for search engine optimization.

The Importance of Building Quality Backlinks

Backlinks – defining backlinks is a challenge only because there are a variety of other terms that mean basically the same thing. You may also hear them referred to as text links, anchor text links, hypertext links, one-way links or contextual links.

A backlink occurs whenever another site links to yours. The link could come from an image or banner type graphic or it could be a linked piece of text.

For SEO purposes, the text links are of primary importance with the goal being to get links that include the keyword phrases you are optimizing for.

The best links are those that are “one-way,” meaning that a site links to you but you do not link back to them. It can be beneficial to “trade links” (called reciprocal linking) with another webmaster for the purpose of gaining website traffic but it’s not a strategy that will improve your search engine rankings or SEO.

When you have a lot of backlinks it shows the search engines that the website is popular amongst other websites and that its content is relevant to a particular niche. Other website owners will be more inclined to send links to a website when that site has valuable content that they want their readers to reference.

Alt Text is Worth a Thousand Words to Google

Alt Text in SEO is a common term that is short for Alternative Text. Websites are written in code like HTML. An alt attribute starts out with the following characters alt= and then it is followed by the actual alt text within quotation marks.

For example, the attribute alt=”Boys Swimming Camp” might appear in an html image for a picture of boys having fun swimming at a day camp.

Why is an Alt Text Important?

Your probably wondering why an alternative text is important. You see the problem is Google robots can only read text words and cannot see images. Search Engine Optimizers use alt texts to help Google understand what an image is about by giving that image a title or simply describing it.

Alt texts can also be helpful because it provides a placeholder for website layout and design if the image is slow to load or is simply not shown for some reason. This allows web designers to see alternative text html coding so they understand that an image is suppose to exist at a certain location on the webpage.

By defining your images with “Alt Text” you can also help your website be found in the Google Images section. The next time you search in Google for a phrase click on the image tab on the top and you will see Google’s image search results.

Google also ranks images like they do with text searches, thus it is always important to take the time and fill out your alt text on all your images so that it can be found in the Google images section. When people are searching through the image search results they can land on your website page by clicking on your photo that is indexed in the Google image search area.

Simple Alt Text Tips

When filling in your alternative text make sure you provide as much information to Google about what your image is. You want to provide the best definition of the image by using only a few words. Make sure you don’t keyword stuff your images because that is considered bad practice in Google’s eyes which could hurt your search engine optimization.

So the next time someone asks you what an “Alt Text” is you can intelligently explain to them what it is and provide them some examples of why it’s beneficial for web design and SEO.

Avoid Black Hat SEO Techniques

“Black Hat SEO“ is a common term in the search engine optimization industry. You often hear it compared to “White Hat SEO” and essentially it’s the light-side versus the dark-side of SEO.

“Luke I am your father… come join the Dark Side” – Darth Vader

Black Hat SEO is the Dark-Side of Search Engine Optimization. Black Hat SEO are practices or methods to try to manipulate the optimization of a website. Google essentially wants everyone to be playing fairly in the online world and try not to create an unfair advantage when it comes to ranking online.

I have mixed feelings about this because essentially SEO experts are all doing what they can to help their websites or clients websites rank on Google. Does that mean that because people who are familiar with search engine optimization are considered part of the “Dark Side?”

In this case, there is a fine line between White Hat SEO and Black Hat SEO. To help you understand the difference between the two I created a list of some practices that are considered Black Hat SEO.

Examples of Black Hat SEO

1. Use of Unrelated Keywords in Text: If you have a blog about German Shephard Dogs you shouldn’t try to stuff keywords related to WordPress plugins in your body or text if it does add any value to the context. Remember Google’s goal is to provide the searchers relevant search results. By writing articles that are irrelevant it provides no value to the readers and Google.

2. Hidden or Tiny Text Links: Some people try to hide links within their background by putting text in a really light color to a color that matches the background altogether. For example, a hidden text link might look like this. I have also seen people try to include very small text links at the bottom of their websites.

3. Keyword Stuffing: Using keywords throughout the body of your text is important but make sure that the information flows and reads naturally. An example (keyword = Christmas Trees) of keyword stuffing could be…

4. Page Content Swapping: Some people will try a bait and switch method. Whereas, they get a page ranked in the search engines quickly for a certain terminology and then quickly change the content to an entirely different context to try to drive traffic to another topic.

5. Duplicate Content: Do not duplicate other websites content in its entirety. This is considered bad practice especially if you don’t reference the original author. You can reference small quotes or snippets of content if it adds value to your readers but simply copying an entire article and claiming it as your own is a definite no-no.

6. Comment Spamming: Some websites have “do-follow comment links” so spammers will post auto-generated comments hoping they can get a backlink from a website. If you install plugins like Akismet it should deflect about 90% of these spam comments.

Why is Black Hat SEO Bad?

If you’re looking for a fast way to get on Google’s bad list and essentially get banned altogether then don’t follow these bad practices. These techniques may help you in the short term and get you some fast results but if you want to stay in the game for the long-haul avoid all these black hat seo techniques like the plague.

Doing these types of black hat seo techniques will also piss off your readers because it adds absolutely no value to your website and to them. Practice safe white hat seo techniques and you will be safe in Google’s eyes.

So the next time someone asks you what a “Black Hat SEO” is you can intelligently explain to them what it is and why they should stay away from it’s practices.

Case Study Implementing SEO Techniques

In this article I am going to share with you how I generated over 135,475 visitors to my website over a couple months and how you can too. Essentially the Insanity Workout Schedule taught me how to do SEO.

About a year ago, I decided to participate in Pat Flynn’s Niche Site Duel. I wanted to create a website that was about the Insanity Workout by Shaun T. I wanted my website to focus on the topics of “Insanity Workout Schedule.”

Little did I know this was going to become my big break-through in trying to crack the code with website traffic and SEO.

You never know where your next “Aha!” moment is going to come from so its a good idea to always experiment because you can learn from every situation good or bad.

Before creating any website it is wise to do some proper keyword research to validate there is a market out there searching for what you plan to offer. So I did some Keyword Research using Google Keyword Planner to verify that there was enough traffic related to this particular topic or niche.

Insanity Workout Schedule Keyword Research

I was amazed out how much traffic the Insanity Workout Schedule was generating. In addition, I found 2 other related keywords “Insanity Workout Review” and “Insanity Nutrition Guide” that also had a healthy amount of traffic.

I knew that I could write plenty of articles related to these three keywords. I decided to focus my efforts on optimizing my site with only three keywords. My only goal was to get them ranked to the first page of Google.

Keyword Competition with Market Samurai

Next, I verified the competitiveness of the Keyword using Market Samurai. I realized that the top 10 Google search results did not do a great job with optimizing their sites and had minimal backlinks.

Just by looking at the image via color code… I knew that green and yellow meant minimal competition. I knew that I had a good chance to get ranked.

Created a Blog Website

My game plan was to start a blog website with WordPress and write some content and experiment with some Google Adsense to see if I could create some passive income. I knew that if I could generate enough web traffic that as a result I could get some clicks with Adsense.

Each of these posts had to be a minimum of 1000 words and had several smaller posts that averaged about 500 word articles related to each topic and linked within that post.

After about a month of focusing on generating back links and writing related content, I started to notice that my traffic was increasing. It was not an immediate result. I first saw my blog post ranked on page 10 of Google.

Then, the next week it moved to page 7, then 4, 2, and FINALLY page 1 of Google. It was an awesome feeling. These are my results that I got from May – June 2013. For that 30 day span I got 16,687 visits to my website.

Apply the 80/20 Rule to Web Traffic

By applying the 80/20 rule I realized that 80% of my traffic to my website was coming from 20% of my keywords. So of course once I started to see results with the “Insanity Workout Schedule”

I applied the same principles to my other keywords “Insanity Workout Review” and “Insanity Nutrition Guide”.

The more backlinks that I received the higher my rankings jumped. As a result, I received more social likes and shares. I also started generating a small amount of commission from Google Adsense about ($72.13 in 1 month).

I also made some affiliate sales ($319.55 on one check) with the Insanity Workout program and other fitness products.

Here are my results that I achieved over the past couple months. Keep in mind I stopped adding new content and optimizing this website as of June of 2013. I had over 100,000 visitors to this website by only focusing on 3 keywords.

People often ask me to help them do keyword research and find 20 keywords. My advice is for them is to focus on 3-4 keywords max in the beginning and spend all of your focus helping those keywords get ranked first. After that you can move to the next one.

Optimizing My Insanity Workout Schedule Post

So you’re probably wondering how I optimized my site. I applied some basic on-page search engine optimization like having my keyword in title, URL, description, and tags.

I made sure that I at least 1% keyword density throughout my post and that I had a H1, H2 headers that included my keywords.

I wrote some articles on Ezine Articles which is an old SEO trick, but I believe it doesn’t apply well anymore with the recent Google algorithm updates.

I generated some backlinks by adding the links on my Social Media sites like YouTube, Google+, Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter.

I also created a Blogger fitness website and generated some backlinks from articles that I posted there.

I created some internal links within my blog and made sure that I cross-linked between each post. A plugin that I found to make this process automated is SEO Smart Links.

I also had another blog website that I had created Networkcaptain.com (No longer exists) and sent some backlinks from that website to my current Insanity Workout Schedule blog.

When other people discovered my website and articles they started naturally backlinking to my website because I provided valuable content. So creating good content is also key to getting backlinks.

Google is Still King of Traffic

I still believe the #1 source of web traffic comes from search engines. However, the only one that really matters is Google. In fact over 67% of my traffic came from Google. You can even do research on industry statistics using Google Trends to Do Market Research.

Social Media is great for social proof, but majority of your website traffic is going to come from search engine optimization.

So to recap, if you’re looking to generate more traffic to your website you need to first find the right keywords for your product or niche that has a proven track record of website traffic. Second, focus your time and efforts to optimize a few keywords and get them ranked on the first page of Google.

By applying the 80/20 rule to keywords and SEO you will see more traffic to your website. I hope you enjoyed this article about Google Search Engine Optimization. Lastly, did you know that website speed has a major factor in SEO? Learn how you can speed up your website by compressing your jpeg images with JPEGmini.

What was your biggest take-away from reading this? Share your thoughts in the comment section below.

Thank you Anthony. I now have a testing plan and I just made some great updates to one our our pages. I will watch what happens with the ranking for this page, tweek, find the sweet spot and then roll-out these changes to our other pages.

Anthony, wow! Talk about epic. The information, the detail and the numbers you’ve provided here on SEO are awesome. Thank you for sharing all of your knowledge with us – some must-use practices that I will absolutely be trying out.

Thanks Kate, definitely shooting for epic content. Glad you found the information useful. The amazing thing with internet stats is it grows so quickly… so I am sure the 2013 numbers are going to massive.

Hi Austin, when you first start off I suggest using Social Media as a means to drive traffic. Social Media shares and interaction can spread the word about your brand quickly. Also, with more social shares, likes, and comments it provides social proof not only to your visitors but also to Google. I have learned that Google is starting to put more weight on social interactions on a website. Naturally, as you grow an audience people will start to notice and will start linking back to your site. Another way to get some quality backlinks is to guest post on other blogs. The more relevant the guest blog to your niche the better. Hope that helps!

Wowzers! This is exactly what I’m looking for. Over the years I’ve been reading blogs and watching videos on this but this is the best comprehensive guide that I’ve found. I have a basic understanding of this now but this would have saved me HOURS a year ago. I’m going to pass this along with the hopes it can help someone else. I’ll also bookmark it too:)

Hi Collin, wow thank you for your kind words. This feedback lets me know that the content I am providing is what my readers are looking for. I appreciate you helping to spread the word. I will continue to provide valuable content.

Thanks Celest, glad you enjoyed reading the article. More importantly that you have some action items that you can implement immediately into your website. Looking forward to hearing about your results…

I knew bits and pieces of SEO, but never had the big picture. This is probably one of the best explained, and most understandable articles on SEO I’ve ever read. Thank you so much for the breakdown. It was like classroom training!

Hi Paul, thanks for the feedback and glad you are able to see the “Big Picture” of how SEO works. Once you understand how it all works the concepts of SEO in detail doesn’t seem as confusing. Let me know if there is anything specific that you would like to learn about.

Wow! Anthony this is such an epic blog post and fill with so much useful information. This is one area that I definitely need some education and work. I will be watching and learning as you continue to educate. Thanks for everything!!

This is an awesome information. I just started to build my Website and Social Media. “SEO” sounded so mystical to me. Your article explained so well and gave me a guideline to follow. Great info! Anthony, Thank you for a SEO lesson. Definitely, there are so much more to learn for me.

Pretty nice post. I just stumbled upon your weblog and wanted to say that I have truly enjoyed surfing around your blog posts.
In any case I’ll be subscribing to your feed and I hope you write again very soon!

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